Taste Test: We Ate Fried Chicken Made With BBQ Shapes

BBQ Shapes are the best flavour of Shapes, no question. (Don't @ me.) So it only makes sense to add that delicious fake BBQ flavour to other delicious foodstuffs, right? For the next three weeks, Deliveroo is offering three unique BBQ Shapes inspired dishes in conjunction with Arnott's, and we've tried one of the offerings. Here's what we think.

The partnership is offering dishes in NSW, Queensland and Victoria, with a different restaurant participating in each state. Queensland gets BBQ chicken tenders with thin-cut fries and Thai sweet chili dip from Seoul Bistro, Victorians will be treated to chicken ribs coated in BBQ shapes from Phat Chicks and NSW has BBQ Shapes chicken tenders from Juicy Lucy - which is what we tried. Here's what we thought.

The tenders came in a generous serving size, and straight away the smell of the seasoning was apparent - though I'm not sure it smelled exactly like BBQ Shapes, they smelled damn good. The pieces were good sized and looked nice and crispy, and just like actual Shapes the flavour was quite visible - a chicken salt looking spice as well as some larger pieces of green chives.

On the first bite, you feel like you can almost taste the Shapes flavour, though as you keep eating it morphs into something else - definitely a richer, more chicken salt-ish flavour than BBQ Shapes' distinctive tang. I'm not sure they quite nailed the Shapes taste. If we hadn't known the theme beforehand, I'm not sure I would have guessed it.

Don't get me wrong: they're really tasty. They're the kind of tenders that you think you're done when you finish one, but then you find yourself reaching for another... and another... The only improvement I could have asked for is maybe a touch more spice to cut through the intensity of the seasoning. Still, I'd eat them again in a heartbeat.

"To be honest, I couldn't discern a particularly strong BBQ shapes flavour profile from these tenders. If I wasn't told I wouldn't have known. But that didn't stop me from gobbling down about 4 of those bad boys. The spice mix was extremely tasty and moreish and the chicken was juicy. I would spend actual dollars on these."

Amanda Yeo, Early Morning Sub-Editor, Tech:

"These were tasty chicken strips, but I don’t know that I’d call them Barbecue Shapes flavoured. I did occasionally get a whiff of a Shapes taste, but it never solidified into an easily identifiable Shapes flavour. I would have missed it entirely were I not searching for it, particularly as, unlike the biscuit, there is nothing in the chicken’s outward appearance indicating a novel flavour.

"If I hadn’t known they were meant to be Shapes-flavoured I would have had little issue, aside from wishing everything was pushed just a little more – more crispiness of the coating, more moistness of the chicken, a more robust flavour. They also would have been greatly improved by some sort of dipping sauce. Blue cheese, maybe. As it is, they are enjoyable but fairly ordinary pieces or chicken."

Amanda Bardas, Executive Editor, Women’s Lifestyle:

"I don't think it tasted like BBQ shapes, but I did taste an initial hit of flavour that was different."

Comments

thingy Guest

Sep 19, 2018, 12:57pm

This kind of reminds me of the whole stuffed pizza crust thing. Yes it can be done, but why would you do it?

Properly done fried chicken is awesome, and combining it with a BBQ shapes flavour is culinary regression.

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